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Monday, December 14, 2009

The Hard Truth From Orlando

To paraphrase the old murder rhyme, “And Knox the girl who bought the beef.”

Well, the verdict is finally in on the Amanda Knox murder trial. She’s been tried a by a jury of Italians (I doubt we’d consider them peers) and found guilty of the murder of her British roommate. Of course, there’s reasonable doubt that she in fact committed the murder or had anything directly to do with it. But make no mistake, Amanda was guilty. She was guilty of being a typical self-centered American twit who went to a foreign country, allegedly on a study program, and instead acted like she was still attending her local community college. She partied, ran around with trash, talked trash, had sex with guys she wasn’t engaged to, and generally acted in a manner guaranteed to bring negative attention to herself. Then when her roommate was murdered and she was brought in for questioning, she continued to behave like a Barbie blow-up doll, smooching all over her boyfriend in the police station, giggling and being egocentrically stupid while her butchered roommate lay, grotesquely murdered, in the morgue.

And personally, I wonder if it wasn’t Amanda who, if she didn’t kill her erstwhile roomie with her own hands, indirectly caused her roommate’s death by drawing the murderer’s attention to herself and her residence, or – as in so many American murders, opening the door to the human riff-raff who perpetrated the crime. Most of us have had roommates like that – who welcome all comers, don’t lock up behind themselves, and invite people they’ve met in bars to “stay over.” They’re oblivious to their own safety and don’t give a damn about yours. They run their mouths about their personal business in public places and they’re not averse to telling yours at the same time. And to compound Amanda’s error, she did it in a foreign country.

What most Americans don’t realize is how poor a reputation we have overseas. Our movies portray us as drugged-out, sex-crazy, fornicating at the tug of a zipper, with no sense of shame, decorum or modesty. And then our young men and women go overseas and prove it, because – hey, I’m not home. Nobody at home is going to know what I’m doing. And the folks are not here to tell me how to behave.

Italy is not Vegas – and what happens in Italy , doesn’t necessarily stay in Italy .

Amanda’s learned what hundreds of other young Americans overseas have learned. You don’t have the same civil rights overseas that you do here in the United States . In foreign legal systems, innuendo and hearsay are treated as facts and you can be convicted solely based on the impression you make on the people around you. By Italian standards, she behaved like a common whore, cavorting with low-lifes and freaks; her reactions to the crime were callous and disaffected. Her credibility was shot before she ever came in the courtroom, due entirely to the impression she made on her Italian neighbors and the police. And no matter what her parents and country do, she’s derailed her future and her family’s with her lousy sophomoric decisions.

Amanda ostensibly went to Italy for an education. I’d say she got one. I hope others learn from her, but I doubt it.